Five potions for Halloween night, none of them alcoholic

It is dark by six now. The pumpkin on the step has gone soft at the top, the hall smells of candle wax, and the doorbell has started.

In the kitchen there is a glass of something deep red, holding the light like stained glass. Hibiscus, rosehip and apple. Four minutes in the pot. About fifty pence.

We did not plan this. We looked at our own shelf one October and realised we sell a tea called Willpower Potion, another called Psy-chic Powers and a third called Dragon Magic. Somebody here has been writing a spell book for years without noticing.

Hibiscus is the whole trick

Hibiscus petals brew a deep, almost theatrical red with nothing added. Beetroot takes it darker and more opaque. A squeeze of lemon lifts the colour brighter still, because the pigment in hibiscus shifts with acidity. No syrup, no colouring, nothing sinister stirred into a jug.

Six of the blends in our shop are hibiscus-led. That was never about Halloween, it was about tartness, which is the thing that stops a fruit tea tasting like squash. The colour was a side effect we have quietly enjoyed for years.

Brew it strong and it holds under ice, under candlelight, and in the hands of somebody who has been told it is a potion and would quite like to believe it.

The five, and what is actually in them

Three of these have no caffeine at all, which matters when the evening runs long and bedtime is already a lost cause. The two that do carry caffeine are both low. Every ingredient list below is the complete list.

If you want a sixth, Dragon Magic is pure green tea and nothing else, and Midnight Mint is chocolate and peppermint for when the door finally stops going.

How to make them look like potions

Serve in glass, brew stronger than you would a cup of tea, and get the pot onto the table rather than the kitchen counter. The colour is the whole performance and it is wasted in a mug. Everything below takes under a minute.

• Glass, not a mug. A tumbler, a wine glass, a jam jar. Anything you can see through. The teapot is glass for exactly this reason.
• A heaped teaspoon per 200ml, and leave it the full time. Weak hibiscus is pink and apologetic. Strong hibiscus is the colour you came for.
• Lemon to brighten, nothing to dull it. A squeeze lifts the red. Milk will not work on any of these and will look like a crime scene.
• Cold brew the day before. A spoonful in the cold brew bottle, into the fridge, and on the night there is a jug of something dark ready to pour while you are still looking for the torch.
• Ice, orange peel, a cinnamon stick, rosemary. Thirty seconds of garnish is what turns a drink into a potion.
• Pour one for the children too. The three caffeine free ones are fruit and flowers and nothing else, and a small person handed a purple black drink in a proper glass will talk about it for a week.

For whoever is on the door

Halloween falls inside Sober October, which is awkward timing for anybody doing the full thirty-one days. A hibiscus brew in a wine glass solves it without a conversation, and three of these five have no caffeine to keep you up afterwards.

There is a longer piece on exactly this problem, what to pour at seven when you are not drinking, in the Sober October guide. And if the clocks going back has already pushed your evenings into the dark, the evening cup covers what belongs in the pot after six.

Buy four, get one free

Five potions costs four, because buy four get one free runs across more than a hundred of our loose leaf teas with no end date and no code. Pick the five above, put them in the basket, and the cheapest comes off. That is the whole drinks table for £28.

If you would rather somebody else chose, the tea shop has the lot, and the Fruity Box is five fruit blends in one order from £25.

The best glass in the room

By half past eight the bowl will be empty and the street will be quiet again.

Somebody will have asked what is in your glass. Hibiscus, rosehip and apple. Fifty pence. No, really.

JoJo